Wiping the blood from his chin, Kael let out a monster belch. Holding back his vomit he started to focus on the energy flowing through his meridians. While cycling it he slowly converted it into elemental energies. Drawing in nature's energy as he went to fill his meridians, he was happy to see that his qi was converting into a split of 60% fire, 20% metal, and 20% wood.

After 30 minutes he finally got his meridians to the bursting point. Struggling to keep the energy in check, he converted the remaining neutral qi into elemental qi before it collapsed again. Gritting his teeth, he started all over again, even going as far as to eat more of the Rhino. Although he was disgusted with eating raw meat, the energy he gained from his internal furnace technique filled up 50% of his meridians.

Four days slipped past like this. Kael only slept for about 4 hours a day. The rest of the time he spent eating raw animals and working with his Qi. On the fourth day, he managed to stabilize the elemental qi in his meridians. Continuing to cycle the energy it now seemed to come to him naturally. This would be so much better if I could use neutral qi, and just keep the elemental qi in my dantian.

Slowly adapting to splitting his concentration to keep his qi moving, he began to try to integrate it into his normal actions. Standing up and walking in circles he slowly sped up. Once he activated his heat raising steps though, everything collapsed.

Two more days passed before he was able to keep the qi cycling no matter what he did. It did not even seem like he needed to think about it anymore, it just kept going unless he concentrated on it stopping.

Deciding to eat one last time before he went to see the monster ape, he got a pleasant surprise.

Soul’s technique, Internal Furnace has advanced. New skill rank, Large Success.

Current benefit, 25% of consumables Qi extracted for consumers use increased to 50%.

Congratulations! Make persistent efforts!

YES! That means if my qi stops circulating I can almost instantly get everything going again just by eating something gross.

Excited, Kael ran over to the stalagmite ring and began climbing. Getting to the top of the gap between two of the stalagmites he shouted, “Bantan old man, I did it!” Sliding down to the inside of the stone ring, he came to stop in front of the old ape. Nearly bouncing up and down he said, “Look, it just keeps going and doesn’t stop!”

The old ape slowly awoke from his cultivation. Looking down at the tiny human, he said, “Good child, you have taken the first step. This process comes with benefits and drawbacks. Like beasts, you will be able to access your qi to execute abilities much faster than humans. However, you will only have about 20% of the energy of a normal human to work with. You will need to constantly refine your body as you will still primarily use that.”

“It doesn’t matter to me. As long as I can get through qi refinement, nothing matters to me!”

“Well child, I hope you remember that commitment. I won’t let you leave here until I am satisfied. Considering I have less than a year of lifespan back, you should hope you can satisfy me before I die.”

“Uhh, then, I hope you can train me well?”

“Hand over your cultivation techniques and I will rebuild them for you. While I am doing that, you need to work on stepping into Qi Refinement. It should be simple for you as a human. Just keep cycling you Qi, and where you dantian is, build a little cyclone. I would start with just putting in one twist in your energy. As you become accustomed to it, add another. Eventually, you will have enough there to progress.”

Thinking, seriously, that is training me? Kael sat down to explain his cultivation methods to the old ape.

“Good, when you feel yourself breakthrough come and see me again. Go now, child.”

Sighing, Kael got up, climbed the stone ring again and left. Sitting back down he started trying to make a loop in his dantian area, but it was extremely difficult.

Days began to fly by again. Every time he would bend it about halfway it would go crazy. If he had too much energy in it when it went crazy he would end up with internal injuries. His internal furnace technique helping him heal was about the only way he could continue.

8 days later he got his first loop built into his dantian. The pain was enormous as it barely fit. Feeling the energy rubbing against the walls of his dantian while it slowly expanded was not something he was prepared for. Faltering, his energy lost stability and he had to start all over.

2 more days passed by before he succeeded again. The pain was still there but not as bad as before. After about 12 hours of running energy through it, his dantian finally had expanded enough to stop hurting. Once he felt ok he began working on the second spiral of his soon to be cyclone.

20 days passed by and Kael was up to his 5th swirl in his cyclone. He ran into a problem though, his dantian would not expand anymore and he was out of the room. After a few hours of struggling with different things, he felt like slapping himself in the head. His mother's speeches came back to him. Qi refinement was all about refining qi, he just needed to purify it more.

Looking at the energy flowing through him, it was like a three-layered cord. Pushing bits of the impure wooden qi from the center into the fire qi, the fire qi flared up, burning off the impurities in the wooden qi. At the same time, the extra fire qi also melted off the impurities in the metal qi on the outside of the cord.

Amazed that it worked, and way better than he thought it would, he continued to refine it down. Three more days passed before he could no longer refine it. Looking at his budding cyclone, it was about half the size it was previously. Hoping that meant he would be able to finish he continued to build more swirls into it.

With the previous practice, he became skilled in manipulating his qi. Every time he would add another loop into his dantian he would purify the new qi again. It only took him another 6 days before he finished his 9th circuit. When he finished building the swirl and reconnecting the qi to be a continuous stream, he felt his body beginning to boil.

Feeling his qi start to build up at an enormous rate, his body began to swell up. Just as he was afraid his body was going to explode, it felt like something snapped in his dantian. Taking an internal look at it, he saw that his fake cyclone seemed to have become a real cyclone. It also broke away from being a direct part of his qi path. Now the Qi was feeding it on one side, while the excess energy was running out the other.

His dantian had other changes as well. The cyclone now was made of pure fire energy. There was a small whirling ball of wooden energy on the inside of it. His metal energy was pushed to the outside of dantian like a coat of steel. As the cyclone of fire grew, the metal impurities finished melting away, leaving a solid shell of gold encasing the inside.

Shocked, Kael was just about to run over to ask Bantan when he received a notification.

Congratulations, you have stepped into Qi Refinement, Rank 1.

Cultivation rank increased Agility by 1 point.

No Cultivation technique available, no extra increase.

Continue to make persistent efforts!

Hearing the notification at first he was amazingly happy. Then he noticed he was lacking a technique, Fuck, I need Bantan, now! He thought as he took off running for the stone circle. Scrambling up one side of it and tumbling down the next, he rolled into the old ape's foot.

“Bantan, I broke through, but I need a cultivation technique! Help me out here old guy!”

“Child, you should really work on being calm more often.” After speaking the old ape reached out and tapped Kael on the forehead.

Feeling a ton of information flow into his mind, Kael struggled to stay conscious. I am so sick of blacking out, and if I blackout now I will at best miss the bonuses for breaking through with a technique.

As the information flow slowed down, Kael began to review it in his mind. Sitting down while he concentrated, he started to follow the instructions. The techniques his parents gave him basically reinforced their body as their qi was running through it. Meaning if they lost their Qi, they would lose that strength.

The technique from the old ape combined both his mom and dad’s technique to balance them, but they still leaned towards strength. The main difference was that the majority of the Qi that ran through the meridians was pushed back into the body. Much like the body refinement stages.

Following the directions and pushing elemental energy into his body to refine it, he was in much more pain than when he used Qi. Sitting there he tried again and again. After an unknown amount of time to him passed, he finally heard his cultivation was successful. Granting him 1 strength and oddly enough, 1 intelligence.

Standing up with a shout of, “Fuck yeah! I’m not a cripple!” he danced around in joy for a moment before clearing his throat. “Ahem, uh, thank you Bantan!”

Giving the child a toothy grin, the old ape said, “To see the lineage of my old friend progress is a joyous occasion. Go back and practice more, you will need to go much further to get my approval.”

“Thanks, I will work hard.” Kael politely said before leaving.

Heading back to his normal area he had more motivation than he had felt in either life. Sitting down he fell back into a cycle of cultivating, refining, eating, and then repeating it again. After getting a solid start into qi refinement, he began ripping through the cultivation ranks.

It took him only 8 days to breakthrough rank 2 and 3. Stepping over the bottleneck into the Large Success stage of rank 4 took him 12 days. His cultivation sped up again after that hurdle, however, he got stuck for a little over three weeks at the next bottleneck. Trying to go from rank 6 into the Great Completion stage of rank 7 was much more difficult than anything he had come across so far. His cultivation once again speeding up after his breakthrough, it took him only 92 days to go from rank 1 to rank 9.

Although he was very happy with his progress, his cultivation method and technique were strange to him. Due to the mixture of two techniques and two vastly different racial styles, the bonuses he gained did not make much sense. He had talked it over with Bantan throughout the last three months, and his view was it being due to the beast style refinement.

According to the old ape, the refinement method of beasts always worked towards increasing their intelligence. The reason being that a lot of Qi is refined into the blood throughout the process, even if it is not intentional. As the blood passes through the brain, the qi nurtures it, increasing the beast's intelligence.

Kael wasn’t sure if he really bought the explanation, but it was better than anything he could come up with. Reviewing the bonuses he received, including rank 1, his cultivation ranks added 2 to all of his attributes.

His cultivation technique added 2 strength and agility, 1 body and stamina. It definitely reflected the two strong points of his parents' techniques. Still, he could not get over that he gained 3 intelligence and willpower. Thanking Bantan for that addition to the technique, he was excited to see what perfection would give him.

Returning and speaking with the old ape about the perfection realm, Bantan did not suggest attempting to break through to it. Kael refused not to at least try. Bantan finally agreed to watch over him but required him to prepare and refine as much qi as he could.

After two months of refining qi and being denied by Bantan, Kael eventually got to a point the ape was ok with. He also was kind enough to pull in a rank 10 beast to help with the breakthrough.

Surprising to Kael, the beast was a small red rabbit. Bantan reminded him however, he was pretty strong for his size too. Also, that rabbit could breathe fire that is hot enough to melt stone.

Carefully skinning it, Kael activated his internal furnace technique. Feeling the immense energy pouring out of each bite of the rabbit, he hurriedly began circulating his qi. As he took in the qi, he noted that the majority of it was fire qi, making it much faster for him to convert and integrate the energy.

While pondering how he was going to do this without tearing his body apart, he felt a warmth gush out into his brain.

Soul is attempting an unexpected breakthrough.

Calculating Cross Over talent from the perception tree.

Soul has 75 talents spent in the Mortal Tier.

Granting inspiration and a 75% increased chance of breakthrough.

Chance of breakthrough 40% (+75% due to talents =70%)

Hearing the numbers and knowing the inspiration came from his talents he followed through with the sudden idea. Pulling energy from his meridians into his heart, he continued to eat more rabbit to refill his meridians. When both his heart and meridians were completely full of energy he exploded it all out into his body simultaneously.

With a roar of inhuman pain, he continued to push the elementally charged energy throughout his body. Feeling everything cut, burn, and shredding as the energy passed through, he refused to give up. Finally, with blood running from his nose, mouth, ears, and eyes, he felt himself step into the perfection realm. With his body beginning to heal at an exceptional rate he heard;

Congratulations, you have stepped into Qi Refinement, Rank 10, Perfection.

Cultivation rank increased all statistics by 1 point.

Cultivation technique increased all statistics by 1 point.

Continue to make persistent efforts!

After hearing the crazy notification, he did not even care about the blood covering his face. He immediately reviewed the statistic part of his character sheet.

Name: Kael Darksteel, Race: Human, Age: 10 / 120, Sex: Male, Karma: 82

Bloodline: Titan(20%) / Fae - Fire/wood(20%), Cultivation: Qi Refinement Perfection

Group A

Base

Mod

Total

Group B

Base

Mod

Total

Group C

Base

Mod

Total

Group D

Base

Mod

Total

Strength

36

36

Agility

21

21

Reflex

39

1

40

Talent

10

0

10

Body

20

20

Stamina

22

22

Endurance

32

2

34

Perception

8

0

8

Intelligence

18

18

Willpower

19

19

Spirit

28

3

31

Luck

4

2

6

Reviewing his stats he thought, I am so glad for that technique change. I would end up buff and dumb, not my goal. Mixing in mom’s technique gave me a solid boost to my agility as well.

“Bantan, thank you for everything you have done for me. I can never repay you.”

“Child, I am just glad to see that my friends bloodline has not died out. I’ll send you out now so…”

“Wait, one second” Kael shouted, hurrying to interrupt him. Walking over, he picked up and stored the rabbits remains in his ring. Winking at Bantan he said, “Waste not, want not. More seriously though, is there anything I can do for you?”

“If you run into any of my lineage I ask that you treat them kindly. Now go, I have not much time left.” Bantan lifted his hand, covering Kael in a mixture of divine sense and qi, he lifted him up to be face to face with him.

As one last gift for Kael, Bantan extended his other hand, poking him in the forehead again. Using his divine sense to transfer a body refinement technique for the child to minor in later, he said, “Remember child, humans stop refining their bodies because they do not think they need it. However, the body is the temple for the soul. After you step in xiantian, don’t stop refining your body.”

With that, the ape lifted Kael up and out of the hole. The last thing he heard was a shout of “Thanks” from Kael.